iansltx

Apparently ROAMAHOME is no more for new LTE-only device swaps; MOCN is the new hotness: 

MOCN looks to be an upgrade, as ROAMAHOME only allows seamless bouncing between both networks for keep sites; for everything else you have to lose signal first (or force band selection). With MOCN there's a band priority list that doesn't put all Sprint bands at the bottom. This *sounds* equivalent to making every Sprint site a keep site, though from the Reddit post B66 will get priority over B41 LTE (fine except in areas that have B41 CA on either carrier), and B66 will get priority over B2 (which is annoying here as B2 is 5 MHz wider unless you're doing non-contiguous CA).

ROAMAHOME is still in effect for 5G devices apparently, which tells me that keep sites are slightly better integrated than the rest of Sprint's sites, as keep sites don't serve as anchors for NR either way. They probably *could* be, but it would require hosting spectrum entirely within PCS A-F and MFBI'ing that spectrum to B2...so probably not worth the effort.

7 hours ago, floorguy said:

So we did 2 things, he moved me over (more on that in a min) and changed my plan for about $5 more ALL lines will be unlimited and more hotspot data.  And I gathered better phone pricing/deals???  Takes effect next billing cycle, and its NOT on any website, but is in their system, since like Nov/Dec..  Hopefully it doesnt bite me.. BUT I can choose to switch to TNX once it takes effect... soooooo we shall see.

Let me know what plan name you get moved to. I'm on the Plus Subsidy business plan, which isn't TNX-eligible, and when I called in I was only given Basic/Essentials/Plus/Premium for $60/60/70/80 as options, all of which are either significantly more expensive or significantly inferior to my $55/mo plan.

Between keep sites and T-Mobile's native network I'm comfortable enough hopping over to TNX to get SA and NR CA, but it's not worth me spending $15/mo extra to make the switch.

Same update. Unlocked S21, Sprint SIM/FW (update explicitly said SPR in the URL). Looks to be a pretty small one; took a few seconds to download.

50 minutes ago, though said:

Does TNA allow you on all Sprint towers or only the 312-250 "keep" towers?

The phone is still provisioned as Sprint, so 100% of Sprint sites are available (you also keeep Sprint's roaming partners/enabled LACs). The only catch is that if you're in an area with good T-Mobile signal and no keep sites, you'll have to band-select 25/26/41 manually to force over to the Sprint network, and eventually you'll pop back over to the T-Mobile network if you don't lock bands. Sometimes you'll even have to skip 41 for the initial lock as if there's a T-Mobile B41 site near you your phone will prefer that instead. Once you get 25/26 though, you can turn on 41 and it should stay put on Sprint sites.

But if your concern is merely having every Sprint site available to you when T-Mobile signal is nonexistent, TNA 100% lets you do that by default (vs. TNX being more of a crapshoot; IIRC Sprint all-sites access is only available on certain phones, potentially with an IMEI whitelist).

Necroposting a bit, but "UMTS-only"? Did you mean LTE-only? https://www.t-mobile.com/news/press/t-mobile-usa-begins-commercial-3g-network-rollout says the network started with HSDPA, so I'm guessing you meant "HSPA areas show up, LTE-only areas don't".

25 minutes ago, RAvirani said:

I used to frequent those sites (oftentimes going to the Wingstop just south of that intersection).  The Sprint site gets much better coverage going east on 64 than T-Mobile's existing sites.  I also think adding the Sprint site will allow T-Mobile to reconfigure the southern site to better meet capacity demands, as coverage will be well taken care of.  

Alternative would be for T-Mobile to decommission their legacy site in favor of the Sprint one, if coverage patterns or costs are better on the Sprint one. Though that'd be more long-term.

8 hours ago, JimBob said:

Big growth potential for the rest of ShenTel's wired and fixed wireless broadband internet.  Lots of public and private money coming to close the digital divide in their non-urban markets.

Yep; just on the residential side Shentel has Beam for 2.5/3.5 GHz wireless, and Glo Fiber for FTTH. Between the two, they could pick up 1MM+ customers with that $1.95B. Hopefully they do so rather than just paying out to shareholders.

Aaaaand my Unlimited Plus Subsidy plan, which I got well under a year ago, doesn't work with TNX. I can either switch to one of the more basic plans (nonstarter due to hotspot allotments/speeds) or spend an advertised $15/mo more to go to the standard Unlimited Plus plan. Think I'll wait instead and complain every so often 'til TMo devices it's worth it to get me on their 5G network more often.

1 hour ago, jreuschl said:

So I just got my S21 Sprint from Samsung.  Stick with ROMAHOME or go full TNX?  Any advantages?

TNX lets you use SA; Sprint SIMs are NSA-only. Not 100% certain on whether NR CA is TNX-only; I'm personally not seeing it here but that may just be a network thing.

Got my (unlocked, directly from Samsung) S21 in at 3:50p today, along with the Qi charger (which includes a 25W wall charger!) and Buds+.

The Sprint SIM from my S20 worked fine in the S21, though when activating I was prompted with an "are you sure you don't want to get a T-Mobile SIM for this?" message, probably because I'm on TMo towers 100% of the time when in Austin (if I was in Fredericksburg it'd be majority 312-250).

Seems like the radio in the S21 is a bit stronger; I'm at the edge of n41 coverage at my kitchen table and was able to pull a few Mbps more than I recall getting on the S20. Additionally, upload speeds seem better on n71; was able to hit 40 Mbps pretty easily where the S20 would hit 30-35.

I'm not seeing NR CA, but I'm not sure whether that's a limitation of the Sprint SIM or whether it just hasn't been turned on here.

2 hours ago, greenbastard said:

Doesn't Verizon throttle their "HD" feature to 720p?

VZW doesn't have a throttle on mmW. Most of their plans state 720p but I'm not sure what the speed cap is.

ETA for my S21 is Wednesday. It doesn't have far to go from where it's being shipped from.

On 1/17/2021 at 8:14 PM, sunmybun said:

but someone i know has the lg velvet 5g. he can do nr ca only with tmobile sim. (tmo version with dimensity 1000c). he only could get 5g nsa with the sprint sim and no nr ca but lte ca with nsa.

That's actually important information. If the Velvet can't get NR CA with a Sprint SIM, but can with a TMo one, that does indicate that the S21 may have something similar going on. At which point I don't think it's a matter of TMo wanting one way or the other. Rather, Sprint's core can't do NR CA because n41 was going to be the only band.

1 hour ago, sunmybun said:

i dont know about nr ca entirely.

but from what i can tell when using my s20 ultra with sprint sim, i was never able to connect to a standalone 5g.

Right, it's widely known that SA doesn't work unless you have TNX. But you seemed to indicate that you had information on NR CA capabilities on TNA. We don't know whether the two are related; I don't think there's anything stopping T_Mobile from running B66+n71+n41 or B2+n71+n41 with 2 or 66 as the PCC (so, NSA).

On 1/16/2021 at 10:54 AM, sunmybun said:

 just use the sprint sim to use sprint as primary but 5g will be only NSA. also you wont be able to take advantage of the new Qualcomm X60 modem. you could do ca with 5g SA in tmobiles network.

Do you have official confirmation that NR CA won't work on Sprint? I was on a call yesterday where I asked this question and was given the opposite answer, though I'm not certain the rep knew what He was talking about.

They've dialed in n41 a bit more on the site with it nearest me. Getting the signal back to the cell site appears to be a serious issue, but still, progress!

Forcing B41 at the same exact location gets me about half that speed, and I'm sure n41 is already carrying more traffic than TMo B41, so...not bad, I guess.

FWIW my Sprint plan (Unlimited Plus Subsidy 55, business plan) clocks ~9.5 down on Fast.com.

The $700 credit for the S20 means I'm now in line for a 256GB S21. A bit annoyed about the various downgrades, but I didn't use the microSD card slot or higher resolution screen, hopefully won't notice the RAM drop, and don't care about having a glass-backed phone. A better fingerprint reader and the extra network features from the new modem are sufficient for an upgrade, and renewing the device after several months for about what the deductible would be on an insured phone is pretty nice.

Figure I'll use the phone for awhile, then pass it on to a family member when the next hotness comes out, as I doubt Samsung will run a deal quite this good again.

https://www.t-mobile.com/news/network/5g-best-coverage-ericsson-nokia

Looks like T-Mobile is happy enough with both their equipment vendors to continue with 'em. No Samsung, but that was a Sprint vendor anyway, and I guess they're busy providing equipment for VZW.

I wonder if there are any geographies where Sprint and T-Mobile networks already use the same vendors. Definitely not here...Sprint equipment is Ericsson and T-Mobile is Nokia.

12 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

The 3.7-3.8GHz block will be cleared by Dec 2021. The C-Band auction will be over this week or at the most  next. The winners of that block will probably start deploying hardware and testing long before then. I foresee that Verizon and to a lesser extent AT&T will be the big winners of that block. 

It'll be interesting to see what C-band coverage lights up in December. Given that C-Band coverage is significantly lower per site than 2.5, I'm going to hazard a guess at 50MM pops covered on initial launch, with 100MM by mid-2022. Not nothing, but I think that in terms of coverage T-Mobile will maintain a 1.5 year lead until they decide they've upgraded enough sites. So we're talking 200MM pops covered in mid-2023 for C-Band.

11 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

I think you are forgetting about the CBRS and C-band. Maybe they will have a 2 year head start.

A two year head start (realistically 1.5) gives 'em plenty of leeway to stay in the lead for the other 3-3.5 years

Sprint B41 has been moved up so the top carrier is sitting at the very top of the band (2680 MHz center frequency). I'm sure this impacts coverage a little but in return they seem to be back to 2CA here, so I can hit ~150/10 1500' from the cell site again.

TMo really does need to add more n71 sites around here though; a couple miles south of me appeared to be LTE-only, and they have plenty of sites that they could retrofit. Of course, if they're planning on adding n41 and n71 simultaneously to a site or two, fair enough.

Looks like the 200MM coverage number is still on: https://uk.pcmag.com/networking/130839/t-mobile-4-million-sprint-customers-are-now-on-our-network

Was rather surprised how few Sprint customers have migrated over at this point. Given the spectrum thinning T-Mobile has been doing on the Sprint side, I'd think there'd be more folks on TNA or TNX, particularly with the push for new phones.

It's good to hear them quoting ~300 Mbps averages on mid-band though, indicating that sites that haven't finished optimization (or running backhaul) won't stay that way.

My bet is that if they put n41 equipment on, give or take, every site that currently has n71, they'd hit 200MM covered. They already have n41 in pretty low-density markets, going wide rather than deep. Wouldn't be surprised if merely providing citywide coverage in areas where they already have at least one live n41 site would do the trick.

106 million covered with n41 (and technically mmWave, but 99% sure unique mmWave pops are negligible), 280 million with n71: https://investor.t-mobile.com/news-and-events/t-mobile-us-press-releases/press-release-details/2021/T-Mobile-Adds-5.5-Million-Postpaid-Customers-in-2020--the-Most-in-Company-History--and-Further-Expands-5G-Network-Leadership-by-Exceeding-Ambitious-2020-5G-Goals/default.aspx

They're still saying nationwide n41 by year-end, which from previous references is ~200 million covered. I'd expect 300MM covered by n71 by then.

Curious whether we'll get another set of mid-band city announcements, or whether there was such a hard push to hit the goal that they're giving up on the announcements because they'd be too long.

Betting the next announcement is an official release of 5G home internet, including announcements on coverage for *that*, as an explicit Uncarrier event.